Meltmedia Creates Custom Solutions For Your Digital Desires

There’s no shortage of web/interactive design and development companies out there, so if you’re going to call yourselves “interactive superheroes,” you better be packing some comic book worthy superpowers (spoiler alert: Meltmedia most definitely is).

With 12 years under its belt, Tempe-based Meltmedia is now the biggest and quite possibly the most capable interactive agency in the Valley. The company designs and builds custom interactive websites and mobile sites as well as web, tablet and mobile phone applications for clients such as Johnson & Johnson, Genentech and heap of other predominantly pharma and biotech companies.

In addition to these large, profitable clients, however, the company is passionate about using its powers for good, so Meltmedia provides pro bono work to soup up the online presence of a charitable organization each quarter, including Chipping Away at Cancer and Phoenix Youth at Risk (currently in the works).

The company started with three designers as co-founders and about $3,500 of their own money in the bank. Meltmedia soon added a tech partner and became profitable almost immediately. Since then, the company’s staff has grown to one of the largest of its industry in AZ, including front- and back-end developers, programmers, a user experience team, project managers, designers, and more. The current partners come from design, technology and business backgrounds (respectively), a trifecta of talent that has helped mold Meltmedia into a well-rounded digital solutions company.

Historically Meltmedia hasn’t marketed itself at all. Thus far, it has grown organically through networking, word of mouth and referrals. This year, however, the company is finally implementing marketing and sales efforts to raise awareness locally and nationally. Heading up the marketing strategy is one of Meltmedia’s original co-founders, Ron Barry, who left the company in 2005 and returned this year as its marketer/evangelist.

According to Barry, the company’s core strength is in its developer-heavy structure, which enables them to design and develop each project in-house. As the slogan goes, “If we bid it, we can build it.”

Meltmedia craves complex, multi-faceted projects with new technological challenges. While the team has found a lucrative and comfortable niche in the biotech and pharma industries, the plan going forward is to expand to other industries with complex interactive needs such as energy, entertainment and broadcast, and also be open to other opportunities that would further diversify the company’s portfolio.